Opening Your Eyes to the Light
by I've Got Nerve
Summary: THIS IS THE START OF THE REWRITE OF SEASON ONE WITH A TWIST. Alyson Daniels is a normal, every day teenager until she comes home one day and gets the biggest surprise of her life. How will meeting Sam and Dean change her life and how will she cope with that change? How will learn to live with the changes when certain abilities begin to manifest?
1. Chapter 1

Alright, the first chapter has officially been rewritten. Third POV.

Chapter One

It all started with a dream. Sam Winchester still wasn't used to having dreams that came true. He hadn't always had dreams like that and he didn't want to have them now, but he did. The dreams were of people in trouble and they almost always had something to do with the demon that had killed his and his brother's mom. The first dream he'd had like that was of his girlfriend dying. Sam had ignored them, thinking they couldn't possibly be true, but had learned from his mistake since then because she _had_ died. So this time when he woke up from the dream - some blond girl was going to be in trouble; he didn't get much information, only a license plate number - he shot up from the bed and started getting his things together.

"Dean!" he exclaimed. "Wake up! We gotta go, now."

"Mm . . ." Dean sat up from his bed in the motel room they were now staying in and rubbed his eyes. "What happened?"

"I don't know, another nightmare. We gotta go."

Dean looked at him warily. Dean didn't like anything that was happening to Sam. Sam knew Dean worried about the dreams and what they meant even more than he did. Dean didn't know what they meant, so he, therefore, didn't like them.

"Come on, get packed," Sam said. "Some girl, she's gonna . . . Well, I don't know, but it can't be good."

Sam had seen a house, or the upstairs of one anyway. There had been blood, a bedroom, an older woman - Sam was fairly certain the woman was the girl's mom. He wondered if the girl was going to be the one to hurt the woman. They would have to get there to stop it, if that was the case.

* * *

Alyson Daniels' alarm clock woke her up as it did every other day of the week for school. She dreaded going to school because it was so monotonous, but she knew she had to go anyway. If only one could skip school on account of it being boring.

She so wanted to push the snooze button on the alarm clock and lay there for just five more minutes, but that would have been difficult because she had broken the clock a long time ago. She had woken up in a bad mood and had hit the snooze button a little too hard and now the snooze button didn't work anymore. Her mom thought it was a good thing that she had to get up when the alarm clock went off, but Alyson disagreed.

She turned the alarm off because it was getting louder and more annoying. She wanted to throw it across the room and make sure it broke completely. She couldn't use the stupid thing if it was broken.

Alyson despised being woken up by anything other than her own brain. Any outside force was considered a nuisance if she wasn't ready to get up on her own.

"Alyson, breakfast is on the table," her mother's voice came from the kitchen, which was downstairs. "You better come eat it before it gets cold."

"Coming," she said. Her mom didn't call for her again so Alyson assumed she'd heard her.

She got out of her flower-patterned bed and made her way to the bathroom, which was bigger than the average bathroom, but it made her mom happy, so whatever. Alyson thought the bathroom was ridiculous herself, but her mom was a high-maintenance woman. Alyson had taken a shower and had washed her hair the night before so she just rinsed her face with semi-cold water to wake herself up. It helped only a little.

She headed back into her bedroom to get dressed. She went to her walk-in closet - her mom's idea - and picked out a black camisole with a white tank-top. The tank-top was slightly shorter than the camisole, so the black showed at the bottom of the tank-top. She put on a pair of blue jeans and flip-flops.

Alyson lived in Southern California. It was spring and it was pretty warm today. The weather had been pretty strange lately - electric storms and such.

"Alyson Daniels!"

"I'm coming, Mom," she said. "I need to brush my hair, I'll be down after that."

Alyson looked in the mirror. Her dirty blond hair was messy and she liked it that way, but it did need to be brushed. Her hair was naturally wavy and came down to the middle of her back and was in layers. She picked up her brush and stroked it through her hair. When she was satisfied with her reflection she smiled and put down the brush. She then made her way out the door of her bedroom.

When she got downstairs she saw her mom standing over the stove - maybe fixing breakfast for herself - and smiling. That had never happened until now.

"Should I get a camera or can I get used to this happening?" Alyson teased.

"No, this is a one time deal."

"Oh." Alyson was slightly disappointed, but oh well. She didn't blame her mom, though, because Alyson hated cooking too. It was boring to her.

She looked at the table and saw a plate of eggs, toast, and bacon. Alyson wondered if it was edible. She would have to at least try it or it would hurt her mom's feelings.

"How come I get the special breakfast treatment?"

"Well, you are graduating this weekend. I thought I could try to fix breakfast for you as an early reward."

Alyson smiled at the gesture and sat down at the table. She picked up a piece of bacon, took a deep breath, and stuck it in her mouth. It wasn't too bad; she could endure it.

* * *

After breakfast, Alyson kissed her mother on the cheek and said good-bye. She picked up her backpack that was by the front door and then looked around for her pocketbook - she never put it in the same place, so she always had to look for it when she needed it. She found it on the couch in the living room.

She got her keys out of her purse and then went outside to her car, which was a silver Honda Civic. Not her choice. Alyson liked the classics, but her mom thought the Civic was more sensible for a girl.

Alyson looked at her watch. She had fifteen minutes to get to school, which wasn't a problem since it was only five minutes walking distance. The only reason she was driving was because it was supposed to rain later that day. Stupid weather.

She opened the car door and got in and then tossed her bookbag into the passenger seat. She turned the car on, flipped on the radio, and then made sure her seat-belt was on. She pulled out of the driveway and drove toward her high school.

* * *

"Are you sure this is the place?" Dean asked as he pulled into the school parking lot.

He didn't know why Sam wanted to meet this girl outside of her school, but here they were anyway. Sam said something about getting a read on her mental state. Because Sam had had a dream about this girl they automatically knew that she was somehow connected to the demon that had killed their mother. Dean didn't know if that meant she was going to be hurt by the demon or if she would end up working for the demon or if she just had an ability or something. He hoped that wasn't the case because this girl - Alyson Daniels, if the research they'd done meant anything - was younger than Sam, which would mean that more than one generation of kids had powers that were connected to the demon.

"This is the school that she would go to if her address is right," Sam answered. "Look for the car."

The brothers looked for a silver Honda Civic that had the license plate that Sam had seen in his dream or vision or whatever it was. When they found the car they debated on whether they should just follow her home or get to know her now.

"I want to talk to her," Sam said. "We need to find a way to stall her, keep her from going home right away."

Dean grinned at his brother. "I have just the thing."

* * *

The school day had passed by very slowly, but Alyson was in her last class of the day - Government. She had also had to take an exam for that class, but she was finished and had nothing else to do. She was staring at the clock, waiting for 2:30 to come so she could get home. She was supposed to go out to dinner with some of her friends later that night and she needed to take a shower, straighten her hair, and pick an outfit. She should've been going to her self-defense class, but she figured that dinner was more important. She and her friends were going to be celebrating their last week of their senior year by eating dinner and then scarfing down more dessert than the human body should have.

Finally the bell rang and she was one of the first students out the door. She went to the middle of the long row of lockers and put in her combination and then got frustrated when the locker wouldn't open. She'd had trouble with it from the start, but she liked the location of it, so she had put up with the occasional problem.

"Is that thing bothering you again?" a voice came from off to the side.

Alyson looked around and say Layla Stevens, her best friend, smirking with amusement. Alyson didn't think anything of it because Layla wasn't being mean, she was just being Layla.

"Yes," Alyson answered her.

"It's your own fault. You should have gotten a new one."

"Yeah, yeah." She retried the combination but still got zero joy. She kicked it and it opened. "Are you still going to the dinner tonight?"

"If I can find something to wear."

"Okay." That would be easy. Layla had more clothes than Alyson did.

Alyson grabbed her backpack from the inside of the locker and slammed the door shut.

"You know, maybe if you treated that locker better, it would do what you wanted.

"Layla, sweetie, the locker is an inanimate object. It doesn't _care_ how it's being treated." Layla looked like she was going to say something smart but then chose not to. "Anyway," Alyson added as an afterthought, "it opens _after_ I kick it. Maybe it likes being mistreated. It's masochistic."

Layla actually laughed at that.

"Hey, can you give me a ride home?" Layla asked.

Even though it was out of Alyson's way, she said yeah. She wasn't going to make Layla walk home when it might rain.

They started walking in comfortable silence until they reached the front of the school and Layla brought up some random question she'd had on her pre-calculus exam.

"It seemed easy, so I probably got it wrong."

Alyson smiled and shook her head. "That sounds like something you'd say."

"Anyway, um," Layla started, "are you picking my up tonight or am I supposed to find my own way?"

"I'll pick you up. Unless you wanna _walk_ there."

They looked at each other and laughed. They walked out of the school and out to the parking lot. It wasn't raining, yet.

Alyson took one look at her car and her good mood evaporated. Her left front tire was flat - so not good. Alyson dropped her bag on the ground in frustration and felt like kicking her tire but thought better of it when she remembered she only had flip-flops on. She didn't want to inflict pain on herself.

"We'll need to call someone," she said, "because I have no idea how to change a tire." Alyson looked at Layla. "Maybe you should catch a ride with someone else."

"I'm not leaving you here alone."

Alyson looked around the parking lot. There were a bunch of kids still there. "Are you sure?"

"Yes," she said loyally.

"Okay."

Alyson took her cell phone out of her pocket and would have dialed the number if a voice hadn't interrupted her train of thought.

"Do you girls need help?"

Alyson looked to where the voice came from and saw two guys who were both freakishly tall compared to her measly 5'3". The one who had spoken had light brown hair that was kind of spiky; he was slightly shorter than the other one, whose hair was darker and longer.

"Depends," Layla said. "How fast can you change a tire?"

"Probably faster than either of us," Alyson said.

"I can do it. Ten minutes, tops," the same guy spoke.

"Layla, I just had new tires put on this car," she said, frustration leaking into her voice. "This should _not_ be happening."

"Do you have a spare?" Again the same one spoke. Maybe the other one was mute. It wouldn't have been the most terrible thing in the world, seeing as to how Alyson thought most guys were loud and obnoxious . . . immature even.

Remembering the question about the spare, she answered. "Of course. It's in the trunk."

Alyson dug her keys out of her purse and went to the trunk of her car to open it.

"What are you guys doing here anyway?" Layla asked. "I mean, not that you don't have a right to be here because it's a free country and you do, but you don't look like teachers and you don't look like students either."

The other guy finally spoke. "We're just passing through. We needed to check the map, so we parked here."

"Do you have names?" It was a stupid question, but it was also a valid one. They'd been talking for over a minute and no one had offered up their name.

"I'm Sam," the one with longer, darker hair said. "This is my brother Dean," He nodded toward Dean.

"What about you girls? Are you going to tell us what to call you?" Dean asked.

Layla spoke before Alyson could. "I'm Layla. She's Alyson. It's nice of you to do this for us." She looked at Sam and Dean. "You two aren't weirdo perverts, are you?"

She sounded so serious when she asked that Alyson had to laugh.

"Well, I'm not," Sam said, grinning. "But Dean here definitely is."

Dean didn't say anything to that. It didn't even look like it had bothered him much, which probably meant that it was true but he didn't care what his brother thought.

Dean got the tire out of the trunk along with a jack he was going to need.

"So, this seems like a pretty nice place," Sam said.

"Not if you live here," Layla said.

"Yeah. Things get dull after a while," Alyson agreed.

"Really? Seems like a pretty decent place to grow up."

"Yeah," Dean spoke up. "Temperature's nice and all that stuff - you're free to roam around."

"Actually," Alyson said, "the weather has been kind of strange lately, with all the temperature fluctuations and storms. It's not normal."

Alyson noticed Sam and Dean look at each other. She wondered what the significance of that was.

"You don't strike me as the weather watching type," Dean said.

Alyson grinned a little. "You've known me for less than two minutes. How could you possibly know what I'm like?" She wasn't being snippy; she was just asking a question, and maybe even flirting a little.

"Well, she's got you there, Dean," Sam said and smiled.

Dean continued to work on the car and Alyson didn't really pay attention to what he was doing. He could've been doing it completely wrong and she wouldn't have known.

Sam started talking to both Layla and Alyson. Somehow they got to talking about school or what was left of it anyway.

"So you're graduating this weekend?" Sam asked.

"Yeah," Alyson answered. "It should be fun. Finally get out of high school.

"Thank God," Layla agreed. "Literally."

Again, Alyson laughed. That was just such a Layla thing to say.

"You don't like this school?" Sam asked.

"Well, it's not exactly this school as much as it's any school. All school is good for is giving you a headache and making you get up at the crack of _why the hell am I awake_."

Dean laughed as he stood up and put the jack back in the trunk of the car. "You know, I had the same attitude when I was growing up."

"You still have that attitude," Sam said.

"Yeah, well, whatever. School sucked." Dean looked at us. "Knowledge Boy here loved school."

"I'm not saying I _hate_ it," Alyson said. "I like learning, just not school things. It's boring and you're never gonna need it in life unless you become a scientist or something like that. Normal, every day jobs don't require you to know about history or algebra and trigonometry. It's not like anybody is going to come up to you and try to discuss the Vietnam War or the Reconstruction of the -"

"Okay, Rant Girl," Layla interrupted her, "we get it. Death to all boring classes. But I need to get home, so can you stop with the blah, blah, blah?"

Alyson tried to glare at her, but failed at it terribly, so she settled for grinning apologetically in Sam's and Dean's direction.

"Sorry. I'm a yammerer. I'd still be yammering if she hadn't stopped me."

"Anyway," Layla said. "Thank you guys."

"Hey, no problem. We're all about the good deeds," Dean replied.

"Do you think it's okay for you to drive home?" Sam asked. "If you just got new tires put on and one of them already went flat . . ."

"We could follow you," Dean suggested. "Make sure you both get home okay."

"I don't know," Alyson say hesitantly. "I don't really have far to go. Is that really necessary?"

"We just wanna make sure you get there alright," Sam said. "There are some people who would take advantage of a situation like this. Not help you, you know?"

Something about the way he said that made Alyson agree to let them follow behind her car.

The two guys headed toward a car that Alyson would've loved to have, but her mom would have freaked out if she'd seen Alyson driving it. A '67 Impala.

"That's your car?" she asked.

"Yep," Dean answered.

"It's hot," both Layla and Alyson said.

He eyed her car. "And yet you're driving a Civic?"

"My mom's fault. She said it's a more sensible car for a girl."

She got her keys out of the trunk keyhole and got into the car.

* * *

"So, she seems sane to me," Dean said. "You?"

"Normal girl," Sam said. "Normal behavior. Doesn't seem evil or suspicious."

Dean and Sam both knew that just because the girl looked normal didn't mean she _was_ normal. Sam looked completely normal, hiding the fact that he was some kind of precog.

By the time Alyson dropped Layla off it was sprinkling and about a minute after that it started pouring. It was like a waterfall from the sky. They pulled up to a two story house that definitely belonged in the rich part of the neighborhood. Apparently her parents were loaded.

Dean parked the Impala behind Alyson's Civic and watched as the teen got out of her car and walked toward their car. It was still raining hard, but she seemed to want to talk to them for a second. Dean rolled the window down and looked at her.

"Everything okay?"

"Yeah. I just wanted to say thank you."

"For changing your tire or for following you home?" Dean asked.

She grinned. "Both, actually." She looked up at the sky. It didn't look like it was going to storm, but with the way it was raining, it wouldn't surprise her if it did. "Anyway, I'm getting soaked, so I'm gonna go."

She turned to walk away, but Sam's voice stopped her. She turned back around.

"Do you think I could use your bathroom?"

"Oh, um . . I don't know. I mean, I don't mind, but my mom is in there and . . ." She looked at them and realized she didn't care what her mom thought. If she said anything, Alyson would just explain what had happened. "Yeah, I guess."

Sam smiled at her and then opened the car door to get out. Dean followed suit and Alyson led them to the front door. She was moving slightly quicker than normal due to the rain. She figured they would have no problem keeping up because of their long legs.

She put the key in the door and unlocked it. She walked in the house and put her bookbag on the floor.

"Mom?" she said. "Where are you?"

No one answered but it didn't bother her. Her mom was probably upstairs and couldn't hear her calling.

She looked at Sam. "Come on. I'll show you the way."

She went toward the stairs and then started going up them.

"Mom?" she called out, slightly louder than her normal voice. "You up here?"

They got to the top of the stairs and she pointed the way to the bathroom; it was straight down the hall.

Sam started walking toward the bathroom, so she went to her mom's room. The door was closed, but she went in anyway. What she saw made her want to run back downstairs and out the front door screaming her head off. But she didn't move. Her mom was on the floor in a puddle of blood that was coming from her neck.

There were so many thoughts running through her mind, but, for the life of her, she couldn't remember any of them. She felt like she couldn't breathe. She knew that if she didn't sit down soon she would probably collapse.

She heard a creak come from behind her, so she turned around. A man with yellow eyes was standing there. The bedroom door clicked shut.

"Alyson Daniels. I've been waiting for you," the yellow-eyed man said.

She didn't know how she found the power to speak, but she did.

"Why?"

"I came here to kill you."

"You . . ." Why would anyone want to kill her? She'd never hurt anyone

She looked at her mom and felt tears sting her eyes.

"Looks like I settled," he said simply.

"Who _are_ you?" she asked, and then looked at his eyes again. "What are you?"

Alyson didn't get an answer. Instead she got thrown across the room by an invisible force. Her back was pressed against the wall and she was slowly rising in the air. She heard someone screaming her name, but it was as if it were from a distance. Then she heard a gunshot. Then she was falling. The shock of hitting the floor made her more alert.

When she looked around, the yellow-eyed man wasn't there. She didn't know how he had disappeared; she was just thankful he had.

She tried to stand up, but she fell to her knees and didn't try again. She tried to focus on her breathing because she was close to hyperventilating.

"Are you hurt?"

She was aware of the hand on her shoulder and she heard Dean ask the question, but didn't answer because she couldn't find the strength to.

* * *

Okay, so here's the first chapter, rewritten and revised.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter Two

"Are you hurt?" Alyson heard Dean repeat the question and subconsciously she knew he was waiting for an answer, but she couldn't get her mouth to move the way she wanted it to.

Dean leaned down in front over her and then he was shaking her gently. "Can you hear me?"

Alyson wanted to answer him this time, but her breathing was becoming even more irregular than before. She settled for bringing her arm up and grabbing his with her hand. At least he was responding in some way.

"Alyson? You need to answer me. I can't help you unless you do."

Dean looked at the blond girl in front of him and knew she was one step away from losing it; soon he would have a crying girl in his arms. A crying teenage girl that he wouldn't know what to do with.

"I think she's going into shock." That was Sam, and he was wrong. She wasn't going into shock; she was already there. Dean understood that. The girl, as far as he knew was a normal girl, and to have this thrown on her wasn't something she seemed to be able to deal with. She had only just come home from school; no one expects to find their mother dead on the floor of her bedroom after such a normal thing. He figured anyone else would be in the same position she was in.

Alyson blinked a few times. The girl was trembling, but Dean watched her take a few steadying breaths. She seemed to consciously be doing so. She was aware enough to make herself breathe again. Dean could tell that she was trying to keep her eyes open, but he could also tell that her mind was trying to shut down. Maybe that would have been better. She would have peace for a few minutes instead of the swirling range of emotions and confusion that was her life at the moment.

"Sam, call the cops," Dean said.

"Okay," his brother obeyed.

Sam went by him and Alyson, and Dean noticed that the girl followed his brother with her eyes. Her brown orbs landed on her mom's lifeless body once again and Dean heard her whimper.

"Hey," Dean whispered. "Look at me."

She did.

"Just keep your eyes on me, okay?" No, he couldn't undo the damage of what she'd already seen, but he could keep her from seeing it again.

The girl nodded. "Yeah. Eyes on you." She was actually speaking now; that was good.

"Can you walk?"

"I can try."

He helped her stand up and that was as far as she got. It turned out, shaking and walking didn't mix. Her legs gave out on her as soon ans she was on her feet.

Dean caught her before she hit the ground again. Next thing she knew, she had her arms around his neck and he was carrying her. One arm was under her legs and the other was at her back.

Alyson closed her eyes and turned her head so she could lean on his shoulder. She could tell from the movements he was making that they were going downstairs now. She half wanted to tell him to put her down because she didn't want to leave her mother there. Her mom wouldn't want to be left alone.

Dean sat her down on the couch once they reached the living room and he tried to move away, but she clung to him like he was her lifeline. She knew it wasn't rational; she barely knew him, but he was the one who was grounding her at the moment. She needed that.

He sat beside her but didn't try to remove her hands, for which she was grateful.

"Are you hurt?" he asked for the third time.

"No," Alyson whispered, realizing she hadn't answered when he'd asked her before. She wasn't bleeding and she wasn't unconscious, so she figured it should've been obvious.

"I don't know what to do," she said, looking at him. "What am I supposed to do?"

"Well, Sam is calling the cops. They need to know what happened."

"I don't understand. What's going on? There was a man . . . He had yellow eyes." Alyson paused; she was questioning her sanity. Maybe she had finally snapped. "You saw that, right?"

"I saw it," Dean said softly.

Okay, so she wasn't insane. Maybe she was having a nightmare instead. God, please let it be a dream. She would wake up and she'd still be in Government class; she'd only dozed off because she'd been bored and had been done with her exam. She would come home and find her mom doing one of the inane things her mom thought she had to do.

"He disappeared into thin air?"

The eyes she could explain. Contacts or a trick of light. But disappearing without a trace in front of her very eyes . . . that was harder to explain away.

Dean didn't say anything, but she took it as confirmation of her theory anyway.

"You know what he was." It wasn't a question. Call it intuition, call it an educated guess, whatever. but she knew he knew.

"Yeah," he answered. "Look, we should wait to talk about this later."

Alyson nodded. She could deal with that. She probably didn't want to know anyway.

* * *

By the time the police arrived, Alyson had thought of every possible way to say what had happened without sounding crazy.

Sam and Dean had stayed with her for two reasons. One being they didn't want her to say anything that would get them in trouble or herself thrown into the nuthouse; the second being they were worried about her. They didn't want her to be alone.

It was true that it was very rare for the brothers to stay while the police interrogated the victim, but Alyson was a teen and, as far as they knew, an only child. She hadn't mentioned a dad or any other family member. She didn't have anyone else to help her through this.

Sam, Dean, and Alyson were escorted to the den, most likely because the cops didn't want them seeing Alyson's mom - the body, they called her - being bagged by the people from the morgue. Whatever. It was a moot point now; Alyson had already seen her body. Nothing would erase that image from her mind, Dean knew. Some things just couldn't be unseen.

"Okay, Miss. Just start from the beginning," a cop said. He looked to be in his mid-thirties and seemed like he didn't understand that this was hard for the teenage girl sitting in the chair across from him.

Alyson took a deep breath and started talking mechanically.

"I got home anywhere between three and three-fifteen. I would've gotten here sooner, but I came out of the school and my tire was flat."

"You changed it?"

What did that have to do with tea in China?

"No," Alyson answered and then looked at Sam and Dean. "These two did."

"And they are?"

"They're friends," she said. "They saved my life."

"Okay. They changed your tire. Then what?"

"I took my friend, Layla, home. They followed me, just in case. The - the tires were new and one was already flat so . . ."

Alyson looked at Sam and Dean again. She didn't want to finish telling the story. She didn't even think she could. She didn't want to say what had happened because it made it more real, it made it true if she voiced it out loud.

Dean started talking. "She invited us in. That's when we found her."

"Did one of you move the body at all?"

The body? Alyson's mind still couldn't accept that he was talking about her mother. It seemed too impersonal.

"No," all three of them said.

"You found your mom right away?"

"Yeah. There was this . . . guy . . . there. He killed her."

"What did he look like? Did anything stick out? Make him easier to recognize? Any tattoos? Outstanding features? Any detail could help find him."

Alyson wished she had kept her mouth shut. Her mind flashed back to the yellow-eyed man.

"There's not much to tell. He had brown hair. He was white. His teeth were really straight. Perfect looking. Everything else was average."

"No tattoos?"

"None that I could see. Almost everything was covered. He was wearing a jacket."

"Do you know the color?"

"I . . . wasn't really paying attention," she said softly.

"Miss, I get that this is hard for you, but we really need to know everything you can remember so we can find this guy."

Alyson wanted to tell him that he shouldn't mess with this guy even if he _did_ find him, but that would have led to more questions that she wouldn't answer. _Couldn't_ answer without them thinking she was crazy.

"Hey," she heard Dean say. "Why don't you lay off? She's doing the best she can."

Apparently the officer hadn't realized he was being so persistent because he nodded.

"I just have one last question." He paused. "How did you get away?"

"I told you. They saved me." Again she looked at Sam and Dean. That seemed to be her theme for the night. "They scared him off, I think. I was pretty much zoned out. I don't remember anything else."

"She went into shock after she found her mom," Sam explained. "We heard her hit the floor and we went upstairs to see what had happened. She had collapsed. That guy ran right past us, but we didn't get a good look at him because we were more concerned about Alyson."

The officer in charge made sure she had a place to stay for a few days, told her not to go in her mom's room, and then he and his fellow officers saw themselves out.

* * *

Sam, Dean, and Alyson were now in the living room. She needed to get her stuff together, she knew that, but she didn't care.

She sat down on the couch. She felt the cushions on either side of her move. The two guys had sit down too.

"Are you okay?" Sam asked.

Alyson looked at him but didn't answer. It was a stupid question and didn't _warrant_ an answer in her opinion. Anybody with an ounce of brains would know she was not okay.

She turned her head to look at Dean. "I have questions and I want answers. As in now."

"Okay," Dean said hesitantly.

"Who are you?"

"We already told you," Sam said. "I'm Sam and this is Dean. He's my brother."

"But you weren't just passing through."

"No," Dean answered even though it hadn't been a question.

"I didn't think so. You are so lucky I didn't tell the police. They probably would've locked you up on suspicion alone."

"You're probably right," Sam said softly. "So thank you."

"What killed my mom?" That was the million dollar question and she wanted an answer even though she knew she probably wouldn't be happy with it.

"A demon," Dean said bluntly. Sam glared at him.

"A demon?"

"Yeah."

"So . . . what I saw was real. I'm not crazy?"

"No. You're not crazy," Sam said.

"How did you know it was going to be here?"

"I dreamed it was going to happen," Sam told her.

This time it was Dean who was doing the glaring. Alyson assumed that the dreams were something they didn't tell anyone.

Alyson focused on trying to comprehend the fact that demons were real rather than that her mom was dead. It seemed easier that way. She knew it would hit her hard later, though. But now . . . now she just wanted to focus on something else. Something that couldn't really be real. She would probably come up with a rational explanation for everything that had happened and demons would end up being monsters in fairy tales. And Sam wouldn't be some psychic person who had dreamed about her mom dying.

That was it. None of this was real. She was just . . . she was just waiting to wake up now.

"So what happens now?"

"This is what we do," Dean said. "If there's any reason why your mom was targeted we'll find out what it was."

Alyson debated whether or not she should tell them what the demon had told her and then decided not to. Yet. But she would soon.

"For now, I think you should get to Layla's house. You should try to get some sleep." That was Sam again. Stupid suggestion.

"Do you need us to drive you?" Dean asked.

"No. If I'm driving, my mind will be occupied and I don't need to be thinking about this right now."

* * *

When Alyson pulled up to the curb in front of Layla's house she just sat there debating whether she should go in or not. Layla already knew about what had happened. She had called her before to make sure it was okay to stay the night. Layla's parents had said she could stay as long as she wanted.

It was still raining. Alyson watched the windshield wipers go down and come back up over and over again until she finally cut the car off. The sound of the passenger side door opening broke into her thoughts. It scared her, to say the least, when Layla sat down in the passenger seat. She hadn't even seen anybody outside, let alone anybody close enough to get in the car.

"Hey," Layla said. "I've never been in this situation before, so I really don't know what to say."

"That makes two of us," Alyson said quietly, not saying that Layla had already said the right thing just by being honest.

Alyson was talking about more than her mom's death, though. She was also talking about the yellow-eyed demon; she knew she couldn't tell Layla about that.

"Are you okay?"

There was that stupid question again. She answered this time though.

"All things considered. At least I'm alive."

Things in the car were quiet for a while. She looked at Layla, who was looking fairly uncomfortable, and felt slightly guilty for that. She wasn't making this easy for her friend.

All of a sudden, Layla looked straight at her and said in a shaky voice, "I'm so sorry."

That did it. That little statement, so genuinely said, threw Alyson over the edge. She felt her face contort into an expression of pain, and she started sobbing.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do." She turned her face away from Layla. It was bad enough that she was breaking down in front of Layla; she didn't want her friend to have to watch her face as she did it.

"I'm going to have to plan her funeral and everything. That means I'm going to have to go through her things soon and I'm not ready for that. I don't even want to go back in that house."

Layla put her hand on hers and squeezed gently. That just made her cry harder. It sounded stupid in her own head, but whenever she was grieving and someone tried to comfort her, it just made her feel worse.

"You know I'll help any way I can," Layla said in true best friend fashion.

* * *

It was two o'clock in the morning. Alyson hadn't been asleep; she wasn't going to sleep and she had nothing to do to keep her mind off of everything that had happened. This meant she had two choices. She could either think about everything and have another breakdown and possibly risk everyone in the house waking up, or she could sink into the numbness that threatened to engulf her.

She chose the numbness. It was easier and safer; she could handle _that_.

Alyson looked at Layla's sleeping form in the bed next to hers. She was snoring lightly. Any other night that would have made her giggle. It would have reminded her of sleepovers they'd had where they would stay up late and then playfully argue about whether or not she snored.

But not tonight.

Layla was in a deep sleep and she didn't want to wake her, so she got up and headed for the bathroom. She had to pee anyway, but that wasn't the reason she was going. She could shed a few tears in there without anyone knowing. The bathroom was in Layla's room and she had to pass by a window to get there. The window was facing the road. She saw a black Impala and immediately knew who was out there. She didn't know whether to be frustrated or relieved that they were following her.

Forgetting about her need to go to the bathroom, she quickly put on one of Layla's shirts and left her own pajama pants on. She silently left the bedroom and found her way to the front door and went outside as quietly as she could. She walked toward the Impala and saw Sam and Dean get out of the car.

"Hey," Sam said when he and Dean had reached her

Sam and Dean had been sitting outside for a while. When they'd found out she was staying with Layla and her family they had followed her just in case something else happened. They wanted to know if Alyson was going to be safe; the demon had thrown her against the wall.

"Hi. What're you guys doing here?" she asked softly.

"Making sure you're okay," Dean answered.

Alyson nodded her thanks and then looked up at the sky. It wasn't raining anymore, which was just fine with everyone involved.

"How're you holding up?" Sam asked.

"Honestly?" She paused. "I don't even know how I've gotten through these last few hours."

Alyson led the two brothers to the front porch and she sat down. The porch wasn't wet. Dean and Sam sat down on either side of her, putting her in the middle.

Sam put his hand on her shoulder, feeling that it was the right thing to do at the time. "Well, the important thing is that you did."

"You're stronger than you think you are," Dean said.

"Oh, I don't know about that," she said, looking down at the ground.

"No, you are." Sam squeezed her shoulder a little and then dropped his hand onto his lap. "You may not see it, but we do."

Alyson looked up at him. She saw that he was being serious and not just saying it to make her feel better. She didn't argue because she could see that he actually did believe what he was saying.

"Yeah," Dean said. "Anyone else would totally be tripping out by now. You're handling this very well."

Alyson looked at the ground again before she started to speak. She found it easier to talk about it if she wasn't actually focusing on anything.

"I keep thinking that maybe I could've done something, if only I had gotten there sooner."

"Don't do that," Dean said. "It wouldn't have made any difference."

"Sure it would've," Alyson muttered, knowing that whatever had killed her mom had wanted to kill her.

"No, he's right," Sam said. "It's not your fault."

Alyson knew they were right. If she had been there, the only thing that would be different is that she would have died too. She knew it, but she didn't believe it or accept it.

"Besides, you don't have to do this alone. We're going to help you."

Alyson looked at Dean this time. "How?" she asked beseechingly. "How are you going to help me?"

Alyson's voice was so broken, so young. She was definitely showing her youth now.

"We're going to figure out why your mom was targeted and make sure this thing doesn't come back for you."

Alyson figured that now would be as good a time as any to tell them what the yellow-eyed demon had told her.

"I know why the demon killed my mom," she whispered.

"Really?" Sam asked, surprised. "Why?"

Had her mom been into witchcraft? Or maybe she had pissed a witch off. There were a dozen or two reasons why people were killed by demons.

"Because of me." She looked at them again. "He was after me."

"Why?" Dean asked.

"I don't know. But yesterday when I saw him or it or whatever . . . he said he was there to kill me. And he settled for my mom. I don't understand why he wanted to hurt me, I've never done anything to anyone."

"Alyson, have you ever practiced witchcraft?" Sam asked.

"No," she replied incredulously. That was a very out-there question in her opinion.

"This thing didn't tell you _why_ he wanted you dead?"

"No," she said again. "It just said it had been waiting for me."

"Well, maybe it was something your mom did," Dean said. He didn't sound like he was accusing her of anything, so Alyson didn't get mad. "But this obviously wasn't random."

"What about your dad?" Sam asked quietly.

"My dad has been dead for almost three years. He was never around much when he was alive. I don't know a lot about him."

Alyson took a deep breath and said, "you guys should go now. If Layla wakes up, she'll come looking for me and if she finds you two here, she'll freak."

"Are you sure?" Sam asked. "That you want us to leave?"

"Yeah. Well, no, but yeah." Even in her head that sounded stupid, but she was sure they got her meaning. She didn't want them to leave, but they needed to.

They gave her their cell phone numbers and told her where they were staying and then they left.

* * *

The officer who was in charge of Alyson's mother's case showed up around noon wanting to ask whatever questions he hadn't gotten around to the night before. So she was now going through the painful process of telling him what she knew.

"We can't find any evidence that your house was broken into at all. None of the windows were broken. The doors didn't look busted in. Now that leads me to think that your mom must have known this guy. But you didn't recognize him?"

"No, but I only knew a few of my mom's friends."

Alyson didn't like where this was going. She didn't want to get caught in a lie. But how could she tell this police officer that the person that had killed her mother wasn't an ordinary man and hadn't had to use the door if he hadn't wanted to? The simple answer to that question was that she couldn't.

"Did your mom have any enemies?"

"Not that I know of. Mom was a good person. She helped out whenever she could."

"Did she get any threatening messages by mail or maybe even by phone in the days before she died?"

"Again, not that I know of. She wouldn't have told me if she had been. She wouldn't have wanted me to worry."

"Had she been acting any different?"

"No." Alyson paused. "She couldn't have known it was going to happen. She would have told somebody, like you."

"I'm going to ask you something and it may sound a little strange, but I need an answer anyway."

She nodded even though she didn't think anything could sound strange to her anymore.

"Did your mom know anyone who worked with sulfur?"

Okay, that was strange. "Sulfur? Why?"

"We found some in the living room near the front door and there was some in the bedroom . . . where you found your mother."

"Oh. Well, I'm not sure. It's possible, but I don't know."

He kept asking questions for the next hour. When he was finally done asking questions, he left. Thank goodness. His asking questions about her mom's friends made her realize that she had yet to notify anybody about what had happened.

Oh, well. If they watched the news then, chances were they already knew.

Layla, who had been sitting beside her the whole time, put an arm around her shoulders and squeezed gently but firmly. Alyson leaned her head onto her shoulder and tried to reign herself in. Layla had seen her break down the night before; she didn't need to see it again.

Alyson took a deep breath and said, "You know what? I'm gonna go. I'm gonna ride around for a while and clear my head."

"Well, let me come with you," Layla suggested.

Alyson stood up and stretched.

"No. I wanna be by myself for a while. I need to think things through. Make them make sense in my head." Alyson looked at Layla. "I'll be back later."

Layla nodded as Alyson walked toward the door; she didn't seem happy about letting Alyson go alone.

Alyson walked to her car, got in, and turned on the radio. She wasn't really listening, but she needed the noise.

* * *

Sam and Dean were doing research on Alyson's family, but there wasn't much to tell. Alyson's mom had moved to California when she was about 18 and had gotten married pretty soon after. There wasn't much to say about the mom. Yes, the woman had gone to social events, had even helped with them, but other than that, there was no record of her. And there was nothing from her younger years. It was like someone had wanted her to disappear for a while only to show up years later.

That was definitely weird and they would try to find out why that was.

"So, why do you think the demon wants Alyson dead?" Sam asked.

"Because it's a demon?" Dean guessed. Demons killed people, who knew why. Dean thought that sometimes demons just killed to be killing; it gave them something to do and they didn't need a reason.

"Do you think the demon will try again? I mean, she's staying with another family now and if this demon wants her dead, he'll attack whoever he has to to get to her."

* * *

Alyson ended up at the motel Sam and Dean had told her they were staying in. She hadn't actually set out to go there, but she guessed subconsciously she knew she wanted to talk to them. They were the only ones she could be candid with even though she still thought they were a little crazy; she thought she was a little crazy, too, for going along with what they were saying about demons and such.

Alyson saw the Impala in the parking lot. There was a parking space right beside Dean's car, so she pulled in and shut her car off. She sat there for a few minutes wondering whether it was okay for her to just show up like this. She knew they were the only ones who could even begin to understand what she was going though. She knew she could trust them, that they were the good guys. She knew that, if they were telling the truth, they were the only ones who could help her.

She took her keys out of the ignition and got out of the car. She went to the room number they had given her and knocked on the door. Sam was the one who answered. He looked surprised to see her, but he said "Hi," anyway.

"May I come in?" she asked.

"Oh, yeah, of course." Sam moved out of her way so she could step inside the room.

It was your standard motel room with two beds, a nightstand, a table, two chairs, and a bathroom. It was the kind of room her mom would've hated with a fiery passion, but she wasn't going to think of her mom. That would've made her break down in front of two guys who were practically strangers.

Alyson saw Dean sitting at the table with a laptop computer in front of him.

"Did you find anything yet?"

"No," Dean said. "But you shouldn't be getting involved with this."

She laughed bitterly. She wished she could turn her back on this.

"It's a little late, don't you think? I mean, this thing killed my mom and it wants to kill me. And I'm not a coward. I won't be sitting on the sidelines in this."

Sam and Dean looked at each other and then Sam said, "Okay. You can help."

"I wasn't asking," she said, looking at Sam, who was taking a seat on the bed closest to the table.

"We have to ask you a few questions," Dean said. "And they're going to sound a little strange."

That was the second time someone had told her that that day. The first time she hadn't thought anything would sound strange, but coming from these two, she wasn't so sure.

"Okay."

Sam took a deep breath, like he was preparing to ask her something he didn't really want to.

"Do you have any unexplained abilities?"

"What?" Whatever she had been expecting, it hadn't been that.

"You know, like telekinesis or psychic dreams. Something like that."

"No." Alyson wanted to laugh at the conversation they were having and if the situation had been different she probably would have, but the situation wasn't different and so she didn't.

She didn't tell them about her ability to fight well because something told her that fighting wouldn't help her if she was up against someone who could disappear as fast as they could blink.

"Anyway, about the ability thing -" Alyson looked at both Sam and Dean. Dean was tense, like he knew what she was about to say. "The dreams -" she looked at Sam now. "You have them."

"You remember that, huh?" He looked like he wished she didn't.

"I would never tell anyone. Not that they would believe me anyway . . . but I would never tell anyone."

That seemed to calm Dean down at least a little bit, so she assumed she had said the right thing.

* * *

A few hours later, Alyson was still at the motel. She didn't want to leave. She didn't know anyone else she could talk to. No one else would believe her. They would just think she was traumatized or crazy or, quite possibly, both. She was surprised that Layla hadn't called to check in on her, though. But she hadn't heard her phone go off so she assumed Layla just believed that she wanted to be left alone.

"You know, if someone had told me a week ago that demons exist, I probably would have laughed in their face."

Sam smiled at her a little bit, but mostly he looked at her with sympathy. It wasn't because her mom was dead. In Sam's eyes, she could see that he was sorry that she had gotten sucked into his world. Alyson looked at Dean, who was no longer on the laptop. His expression was the same at Sam's although Dean hadn't smiled at all. It was like Dean knew all to well what losing a parent felt like.

"So, how long have you known about this stuff?"

"Since we were kids," Dean answered.

"Something attacked our mom," Sam said softly. "We think it was the same thing that attacked yours."

"Your mom died?"

"Yeah, " Dean answered. "Our dad has been hunting it ever since. When we got old enough we started hunting it too."

"Oh."

Alyson was lost for words. She couldn't imagine growing up like that. She couldn't imagine how someone younger than herself could wrap their mind around the concept of demons. She wasn't sure _she_ could wrap _her_ mind around the concept yet.

A terrible thought suddenly occurred to her. This demon was after her, but that didn't mean it wouldn't kill someone else to get to her. Because, apparently, it would.

"Do you think this thing will try again soon? To kill me, I mean?"

"I think it depends on whether or not you take top priority," Dean said.

Dean wasn't sure about letting Alyson in on everything, but she probably did need something else to focus on, something she could actually work with, something that would keep her from focusing on the real problem, which was that her mom was dead.

"Is it safe to stay with Layla with this thing after me?"

"Would they let you stay with anyone else?"

"No," she said. "Probably not. But if they get hurt, it's on my head."

"It wouldn't be your fault," Dean said. "You didn't _ask_ for this to happen."

The three of them sat in silence for a while until a thought popped into her head.

"The police said they found sulfur at . . . the crime scene. At my house. It was near the front door and upstairs." She paused. "Was that from the demon?"

"Yes. That's a tell-tale clue that a demon has been in a house."

It made sense if one thought about it. Demons came from hell and hell supposedly had sulfur like substances floating around.

"Hm. So . . . you're following this thing?"

"It's not as simple as that," Dean said.

"See, remember that dream I told you about?" Sam didn't wait for her to answer. "When I have a dream like that, it's always connected to that demon, or it's about someone who's connected to that demon. I don't know why, but that's the way it is."

"Why did you assuming I had an ability if you're the one who's connected to it?"

"I had a dream a while back about this guy. We found out he was telekinetic; he was connected to this demon too."

"How?"

"His mom died when he was a baby," Dean said. "The demon killed her."

"Something's weird about this though," Sam said.

Alyson laughed a little. "You mean something's not?" Everything she had learned over the last thirty-eight hours had been weird.

Dean smiled at that. "Actually, this is the story of our lives. Weirdness abounds."

Alyson shuddered. "That's scary." She realized she had said that out loud and smiled sheepishly at them. "No offense."

"None taken."

"Anyway," Sam interrupted, "the way your mom died, it doesn't fit the pattern.

"Pattern?" she asked. "You mean a M.O."

"Yeah. When this thing kills someone, it usually pins them to the ceiling and burns them. There's usually blood coming from the stomach, also."

"Maybe something stopped it," Dean suggested.

"What could stop it? Your guns didn't work."

Alyson bit her lip, thinking about what could've happened. Suddenly, it hit her.

"That demon expected me to be there. It obviously knew what was going on around me because it got there around the time _I _would've gotten there if I hadn't had that flat tire."

Sam and Dean both moved around - squirmed, even - when she said that.

"Did you guys have something to do with that?"

"No," Dean said, trying to look innocent. It wasn't working, but she let it slide - for now. Bigger fish to fry and all that.

"Anyway, on with my theory. That demon was waiting for me. If the house had been on fire, he wouldn't have been able to get to me. He probably didn't know you two would be there."

"That's the theory I'd go with," Sam said.

Alyson looked at her watch. It was nearing two o-clock. She knew she should leave and head back to Layla's house, but she didn't want to. She wanted to keep away from Layla and her family. Just to be on the safe side.

"I guess I better go." She stood and looked around for her pocketbook. It wasn't there, which meant it was still in the car. As was my cell phone.

So Layla probably had tried calling and was freaking out by now because Alyson hadn't been answering. She went towards the door, but turned back around.

"I'll call you before I go back to my house. I'll probably have clearance by tomorrow night. I'll go while everyone else is at graduation."

Dean nodded. "Sounds like a plan."

Alyson turned back towards the door, opened it, and said bye before stepping outside.

* * *

Okay, so here's the second one. As I'm rewriting I'm realizing that I started out super slow on this story. LOL. I think I'm fixing that though.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter Three

Sunday night came sooner than Alyson would've liked. It should've been a happy time for her, but instead it was a time of grief. She should've been planning on celebrating with her friends and family. Instead she had to to through her mom's things so she could begin planning for her funeral.

_Her funeral_? Alyson thought. _This isn't happening_.

That was how she felt. She didn't know how to deal with any of the things that had happened, so she had detached herself from the world around her. She had walked around for the past few days hardly feeling anything. It hurt less that way.

"Are you sure you'll be okay here by yourself?" Layla's voice cut through her thoughts. "Because we can stay here with you."

"No," she said. "You shouldn't miss your graduation because of me." She looked up at Layla, who was standing in the doorway of her bedroom. "I'll be fine."

Layla was wearing a white gown that flowed down to the middle of her calves. She had white high-heeled sandals on.

"You look good." Alyson smiled sadly, wishing it could've been her in the white gown. But she had decided not to go to the graduation ceremony the moment she had accepted that her mom was dead. She didn't want to go because her mom couldn't go. And her mom should've been able to go.

"I better go then," Layla said, but she didn't move.

"Yeah," Alyson agreed.

"I'll bring your diploma to you."

"Okay," she said.

* * *

Twenty minutes later, Alyson pulled into the driveway in front of her house. She didn't want to go in alone, but she hadn't called Sam and Dean like she was supposed to have. She knew she had to deal with this herself.

Taking a deep breath, she got out of her car and walked up to the front door, pausing for a minute before going in. She was surprised to see that the living room looked relatively normal. She had thought it would have been messier with the police having gone though it and all.

Alyson closed her eyes, trying to make herself relax, but quickly reopened them when the image of her mom came into her mind.

_Where should I start?_ she asked herself silently. They didn't have a basement; they didn't use the attic; the den was more of an entertainment room than a place you would keep important papers. The only place left was her mom's room, because she knew the guest room didn't have anything in it and neither did her room.

She made her way to her mom's room. The door was open, so she just walked in. She avoided the spot she had found her mom and went straight to the closet to see what she could find.

There was a shoebox on the floor that she picked up and put on the bed. She opened it. It was just pictures. The picture on top was of her mom standing beside a blond-haired woman.

_They look so happy_, she thought. They were smiling brightly. She assumed they were eighteen or nineteen. According to the clothes the two girls were wearing, it was the late 1960s or early '70s.

She put the picture back in the box, making a mental note to go through them later. She looked around the room and saw a filing cabinet. She'd known it was there and she didn't know why she hadn't looked there first. She went towards it, but stopped when she saw the bloodstain on the carpet.

Her mind flashed back to the image of her mom lying there with blood seeping from her neck. Her eyes welled up with tears that she wanted to ignore, but she knew she couldn't. She backed up a few steps so she could sit on the bed, but she didn't feel comfortable there so she chose the floor instead. She couldn't look away from the medium-sized bloodstain and she felt sadness come over her, suffocating her. It felt like four walls of grief were closing in on her.

She scooted closer to the bloodstain on the carpet. Being near it made her feel closer to her mom in a weird, twisted way. She could almost hear her mom saying, _What you're feeling is normal, but you will heal in time_.

Guilt joined sadness because she felt that it should've been her instead of her mom who had died. The demon had been after her, not her mom.

"I'm so sorry, Mom. You shouldn't have died because of me." She felt the tears spill over onto her cheeks and they didn't seem like they were going to stop flowing anytime soon. She'd ignored the pain for too long and it was coming back to haunt her.

She put her hand on the stain, surprised that it wasn't completely dry yet. Her hand had blood on it. She didn't ignore the irony of it. Her mom was dead because of her.

A sort of golden light filled the room. Then her mom's voice came from above her. "I would have died protecting you. I'm your mother. It's not your fault."

Alyson looked up and, sure enough, her mom was there. Or the spirit of her mom, anyway. She had finally lost it. She talked to her anyway.

"But it is," she said. "It is my fault. That thing was after _me_."

Then came the anger, anger for what had happened to her and her mom. She felt like punching something, but she couldn't find the will to pick herself up off the floor.

The anger didn't last long, but the sadness and the guilt stayed, along with worry about what was going to happen next, and fear about what was going to happen to her.

She looked at her mom. She wanted to hug her, but with her luck she'd probably just go through her mother anyway. She settled for talking instead.

"How can I get through this?"

Her mom sat down beside her. If she was a ghost, she wasn't cold. She was warm.

"I taught you all you need to know about what to do next."

"How long am I going to feel like this?" She wanted the numbness to come back. That, she could deal with. That didn't hurt. "How long is this going to hurt?"

"You already know the answer to that question. It will ease with time. But the reminder will always be there. This wasn't meant to be easy, sweetie."

That didn't help Alyson. It just made her cry harder. She now felt guilty for shutting herself down and not letting herself feel this.

"Will things ever get back to normal?" She didn't expect an answer for that and she didn't get one.

"I don't know what I'm supposed to do without you here," she admitted. "Where do I go from here?"

"That's for you to decide. A lot of things are going to happen to you in the future. Remember not to lose yourself."

That was vaguely cryptic. Alyson didn't like it.

"Are you actually here?" Alyson looked at her mom with new eyes, wondering if she was real.

Her mother nodded. She turned to Alyson so she could bring her hand up to her face. It didn't go through Alyson like she'd though it would. It was solid. It made her feel safe and warm.

And, oh yeah, she had definitely lost it. She was talking to the spirit of her mom, who may or may not have actually been there. And she was taking comfort from her.

"I love you. I hope you knew that. I miss you so much." Alyson grabbed the hand that was on her face and didn't let go. "I shouldn't be doing this yet. I'm only seventeen. I shouldn't be burying my mom. You should have died thirty years from now when you would've been gray-haired and in a nursing home."

Alyson was now finding it hard to breathe, but she continued talking anyway.

"I hate how hard this is . . . how bad it feels. But you're right; it's not supposed to be easy."

She stopped talking so she could try to calm herself down a little. It didn't work much, but she was able to breathe easier. Her mom gently pulled her hand from Alyson's and said, "I have to go now. I just didn't wanna cross over until I knew you were okay. And you _will be_ okay."

That made her sad. "So I won't be seeing you again?"

Her mom shook her head and then, in another flash of golden light, she was gone.

* * *

Alyson didn't know how long she sat there on the floor crying, but it had to have been for at least an hour. That was what it felt like, anyway.

_Okay, now you have to get up_, she told herself. So she got up. She went to sit on the bed and accidentally knocked the box of pictures off of it. Alyson groaned inwardly because the top from the shoebox had come off and the pictures had spilled out.

She slipped back down onto the floor to pick them up, but stopped when she felt an evil presence in the room. She was chilled to the bone and she wasn't ashamed to admit it. She still stood up to face it, taking in her surroundings on the way up.

The demon that had killed her mother was between her and the bedroom door, which was the only way out of the room, unless she counted jumping out of the window, which she didn't. There weren't many weapons in the bedroom and the ones that were there weren't within reaching distance.

"Looks like Sam and Dean aren't here to protect you this time."

The reality of that statement hit her with full force. She suddenly couldn't breathe and her head felt dizzy, like it was spinning at eighty miles an hour. She knew she was going to die. She just knew it.

She was thrown up against the wall, just like the last time they'd been there. The back of her head made contact with the wall and she tried to fight the darkness that was threatening to take over. She felt herself rising up the wall towards the ceiling; she still felt dizzy, but she was more alert than she had been a second ago.

She found herself looking down from the ceiling at the room. Suddenly a severe pain sparked in her abdomen. It was a pain so fierce it took what was left of her breath away. It felt like hot pokers were burning her from the inside out and they had cut their way through.

As quickly as the pain came, it vanished. She didn't know how it had happened, but she was thankful for it. When she got her breath back she screamed as loud as she could. She screamed until there was no air left in her lungs.

* * *

Outside, Sam and Dean were sitting in the Impala, waiting for Alyson to come back outside. They were a little angry at her for not letting them know she was coming to the house - she was supposed to have called first. But they also knew she had needed time to herself in the house to help jump-start the healing process.

Everything was going great until the radio started going all static-y. Something supernatural was around. Three guess what. It didn't take them more than a few seconds to race to the front porch when they heard a very feminine scream fill the night air.

Dean kicked the door in and Sam raced past him to the stairs. Dean wasn't far behind him.

"Alyson, where are you?" Dean yelled.

"Help!" came the answering scream.

They heard something fall that made a huge _thump_. Once inside the room, Dean saw what had made the noise. Alyson had apparently been pinned to the ceiling. And they were too late. There was blood on the front of her shirt where the demon had done whatever he'd done.

Sam put a hand on her shoulder and Alyson shrugged it off.

"Hey, it's okay. It's me . . . Sam. Are you okay?" He was speaking softly, soothingly.

Alyson moved away from him and got up to her knees, looking frantically around the room, making sure the demon wasn't back.

"I'm okay," she said.

"No, you're not. You're bleeding," Dean said. "You need to go the hospital."

The thing was that Alyson did seem okay. She was obviously in shock then.

"No, I'm fine." She felt her stomach, seeming amazed that she was fine. "I don't have a scratch on me."

It was true. She lifted her shirt up a little so he and Sam could see. There was a bunch of blood, but there wasn't a wound. The blood was covering a smooth, flat stomach.

"I don't know how that's possible, but I'm fine."

Sam and Dean tried to take that in, but they didn't say anything about it. This was a whole new level of weird, and it surprised them.

"What happened? You were supposed to call us," Dean said. He wanted to scold her, but he didn't. She had just been through something traumatic. Not to mention, she didn't have to listen to him or Sam. They didn't know her that well, and she didn't know them either.

"I needed to be alone. How did you know I was here?"

"Well, you weren't at Layla's. We just figured this was where you would be. How long have you been here?" Sam asked. Her car had already been here when they had arrived.

"Over an hour. That demon showed up. Next thing I knew, I was pinned to the ceiling and my stomach . . ." she trailed off.

"It was cut," Dean finished for her.

"Yeah. It was the worst pain I've felt. It didn't last long, but I just thought I was going into shock."

"Then you just healed?" Dean asked skeptically. What was she, to be able to do that?

"I guess."

"Well, I've never seen _that_ one before."

She was a whole new level of weirdness. But she wasn't dead and she wasn't hurting anymore so Dean guessed that he was okay with that - as long as she wasn't evil.

* * *

Dean and Alyson were going through the filing cabinet, not finding anything interesting, when Sam said, "Hey, look at this." It got the attention of both Alyson and Dean. Dean looked at Sam while Alyson continued looking through the filing cabinet.

"Find anything?" Dean asked.

"It isn't what we were looking for, but . . . yeah."

Sam had been going through the pictures Alyson had knocked off the bed and she didn't know what Sam had found, but he had a shocked expression on his face.

"What is it?" Alyson asked hesitantly.

Sam didn't answer. He just picked up a few pictures and handed them to Dean, who looked at them and then seemed confused and also shocked.

"What? What's wrong?" Alyson asked with impatience in her voice.

Dean handed her the pictures he was holding. "Do you know who this is?" He pointed to one of the people in the picture. The picture that was on top was the one she had been looking at earlier.

She turned the picture over to see if there was a name, but there wasn't.

She shrugged. "No. I mean, that's my mom. I don't know who she's with." She could tell by their expressions that they weren't telling her something. "But you do."

"Yeah," Sam answered. "That's _our_ mom."

"Is your mom from Lawrence, Kansas?" Dean asked.

"Yeah. My mom's parents died there."

"When was this?" Sam asked.

"My papaw died when I was ten. He had a heart attack. Mamaw died about two months after that. I think without him around she just gave up."

"How did she die?"

"I don't know. In her sleep, I think. I know they found her in her bed. That doesn't sound demonic, right?" For all she knew, it could have been.

"No. It doesn't," Sam said.

"My mom knew your mom," she said, letting it sink in. "And by looking at this picture, I would say they were pretty good friends."

She looked down at the picture again and then handed it back to Dean. She didn't know what to make of this and by the two guys expressions, neither did they. She decided to give them a few minutes alone. She wanted to change her clothes anyway; they were a bloody mess.

"Um . . . I'll be back. I need to change my clothes."

They both nodded and gave her grateful smile before she went out of the room.

She didn't know what this new revelation meant. From what she knew, her mom had been normal. Maybe Alyson had done something wrong. She had made herself a target somehow; she just wished she knew the reason. Not to mention the fact that Sam and Dean's mom had known hers. Possibly a coincidence, but probably not.

Then there was the healing thing. She didn't know where the hell that _came_ from. It had never happened to her before.

She went to her room and got a pair of clothes out of the walk-in closet and then went to the bathroom and shut the door. She pulled her shirt off and threw it in the tub. She then looked at her stomach. Aside from the blood, there wasn't any evidence that she'd ever been hurt at all. She wasn't even sore. She didn't have a scar either.

She washed the blood off of her skin and then pulled her pants off because there was blood on them as well. She put on an over-sized T-shirt and sweatpants she had picked out because she had been kind of cold, probably from the blood loss, but she didn't know if she should wait a few minutes or if she should go ahead and go back to her mom's room.

The brothers probably needed as much time to comprehend this new information as she did.

* * *

"What does this mean, Dean?" Sam asked.

"I don't know," Dean said.

If Alyson's mom had known their mother, maybe Alyson was connected to _his_ family in some way. And of course since she was a girl, she probably wasn't meant to last long. Most women connected to their family didn't live to a ripe old age. His mom hadn't, Sam's girlfriend hadn't. It was one of the reasons Dean didn't let a lot of women close to him.

"You know what this means, right?" Dean asked Sam.

"What?"

"She's officially our responsibility, Sam. We have to watch out for her somehow."

Dean heard the clicking of a door and thought it had come from downstairs, but he knew both Sam and Alyson were upstairs with him. So who had come in the house? He walked out to the hallway and saw Alyson come out of the bathroom.

"You heard that too?" she whispered.

"Yeah," Dean said. He put a finger to his lips and he guessed she got the message because she nodded and didn't speak again.

"Alyson, are you up there?"

Alyson looked at him and, hesitantly, Dean gave her the go-ahead to speak again.

"I'm up here, Layla." Then to Dean, "Let me do the talking?"

Dean nodded.

. . .

Alyson heard Layla coming up the stairs. "Mom dropped me off here. We went home and you weren't there so I got worried." She finally appeared at the top of the staircase. She stopped for a second when she spotted the two men. "I knew that car out front looked familiar. What are you guys doing here?"

Confusion was written all over Layla's face, so Alyson tried to explain. "These two are witnesses. They aren't supposed to leave town yet."

"Witnesses? They came inside with you?"

"Yeah. I invited them in. They saw what I saw."

"You didn't tell me that," Layla said, sounding hurt.

"Oh. Well, it didn't seem important."

Layla smiled a bit and nodded. "You're right. But that still doesn't explain why they're here with you _now_."

"I called them," Alyson said quickly and it didn't sound natural to her ears, but she hoped Layla bought it.

"You _called _them?"

"Yeah. I didn't want to go through all this stuff by myself, and with you and the rest of my friends being at graduation, they were the first people that came to mind."

Layla looked irritated. "I told you I didn't have to go. I would have come here with you."

"I know," Alyson said, trying to calm her friend down. "But I told you that you shouldn't have to miss it because of me. I mean, graduation is one of the most important things that happen in a student's life."

Layla was silent for a minute but then said, "So, what are we looking for?"

Alyson smiled slightly. "A life insurance policy. Something that says she had a graveyard plot. Maybe something that would give us a clue as the why this happened. Like maybe she was mixed up in something."

"Let's get to work then," Layla said, walking past Alyson and into the bedroom.

"Wait!" Alyson said with panic in her voice. "You don't want to go in there."

Alyson was too late. Layla had a hand to her mouth like she was trying to keep from vomiting.

"Is that where you found your mom?"

"Yeah," she said softly. "I'm sorry. You shouldn't have seen that."

"It's okay. I'm okay," Layla said, taking her hand away from her mouth. "It just surprised me, that's all."

With that, the four of them started working.

* * *

Two hours later, they found a folder with proof of life insurance. It was a twenty-five thousand dollar policy, which Alyson was grateful for. She didn't know what she would have done if she hadn't found it.

The folder also contained papers stating that her mom had a plot at a local graveyard.

"Alyson, I found something," she heard Layla say.

"What is it?" she asked.

Alyson turned to look at her. Layla was holding a letter-sized envelope.

"It's got your name on it," Layla said, handing it to her.

"That's my mom's handwriting." Alyson looked around the room. "Where did you find this?"

"In a chest in the closet. It was marked _private_. I figured it was something important.

Alyson nodded and then looked at the other three that were in the room. "I'm gonna go read this. I'll be back in a minute."

The other three nodded as she walked out the door and turned to go to her room. When she got there she sat on her bed, opened the envelope in her hand, and pulled out the letter. It was folded three ways so she unfolded it and started reading.

_Dear Alyson,_

_If you're reading this, then either you were snooping around in my things or I'm dead. The realist in me believes the latter of the two. I don't know how old you are now, but as I'm writing this, you're six years old. If I'm dead, you're probably having a hard time understanding what's going on. I can't imagine the pain you're going through._

_If I'm gone, there are things you need to know about yourself that I couldn't bring myself to tell you out loud. If you're reading this now, I guess I never did tell you because if I had I would've destroyed this letter._

_When you were born, an old priest visited me after I came home from the hospital with you. He told me you were precious to the world. I thought he was just being religious. Every one of God's children is special and all that. But then he said you were part of some ancient prophecy. He didn't tell me much after that because I asked him to leave. He did get one last thing out, though. You're supposed to be a Warrior for the Light. I don't really know what that means because I didn't let him explain. I just thought you should know, on the off chance it might be true. If it is true, you'll know. The priest said you'll be able to do amazing things. He also said you'd be in danger if that information fell into the wrong hands._

_I didn't tell anyone about that visit and it's up to you whether you want other people to know. The only thing left to say is that I love you._

_Love,  
Mom_

Alyson sat there for a few minutes trying to comprehend everything. She couldn't.

Her mom had known that she might be different and she hadn't told her. Alyson didn't blame her. She wouldn't have told her either.

She knew she had to tell Sam and Dean. Maybe they knew what being a Warrior for the Light meant, because she sure didn't. She also knew she couldn't tell them anything that night because Layla was there. So she settled for just going back to the other room so she wouldn't have to be alone.

* * *

Alyson set the funeral for two days later. A lawyer had come up to her afterwards and had said her mom had hired him because she had written a will, which surprised her. Her mom hadn't been that old and she'd been healthy. She shouldn't have had any reason to write a will.

Alyson invited the lawyer back to her house and she was now sitting in her living room with him.

"What is this about?"

"Your mom left you everything, which means your mom's money now belongs to you."

Technically, it was her dad's money. His parents had been really well off. Actually, extremely rich would have described them better. When they had died, they'd left all their money to him. In turn, he'd left what was left to her mom, and now she'd left it to Alyson.

"She had close to seven hundred thousand dollars in the bank. It's in separate accounts, of course. The house belongs to you also.

"Do you need me to sign anything?"

"I don't, no. But I'm going to have to help you get the accounts changed over to your name. The house needs to be changed over too."

"How do I sell the house?"

"Sell it?"

"Yes. I don't want to live here." She was pretty sure she was looking at him like he was stupid, but that was kind of how she felt. "Too many bad memories."

"Oh." He sounded like he should have realized that and now that she had said something he was ashamed that he'd missed something so obvious.

"Well, legally _you_ can't since you're not an adult, but you can hire me to do it for you. I would get twenty percent of what you get, but the rest would go to you after it's sold."

"Okay. Let's do that."

"I'm going to have to get someone in here to tell us how much it's worth. The carpet in the upstairs bedroom is going to have to be replaced first, though. I'm also going to have to type up a contract for you to sign about selling the house."

"Well, what if I'm not here when you sell it? Like if I decide to move or something?" She couldn't stay in this house, that was for sure.

"We can put it into an account. You'll just have to leave me a number where I can reach you."

* * *

About twenty minutes later there was knock on the door. The lawyer was still there so she just excused herself, or tried to anyway.

"Actually, we're pretty much done here."

"Oh, okay. Well, I'll walk you out then."

They walked to the front door and she opened the door to see who was there. Not surprising, it was Sam and Dean. What surprised her was that they had knocked.

"Hey," they said.

"Hi. Come in." She moved so they could come through the doorway. They were looking at the man standing behind her, so she introduced them. "This is my mom's lawyer. We were just going through some things. He was getting ready to go."

"Yes, I was," he said. He looked at her and smiled politely. "You'll need to come by my office sometime in the very near future to sign that contract we talked about."

"Okay," she said. She shook the lawyer's hand and then closed the door after he walked out.

"So . . . what are you guys doing here?"

"We were wondering what you were planning on doing," Sam said.

She thought that was a strange question, but she didn't say anything about it. She settled for asking a question of her own.

"You couldn't have called to ask me that?"

"Well, no. This isn't a conversation you have over the phone," Dean said.

"Okay." Alyson was intrigued. "What is it?"

"We need you to keep an open mind when we ask you this, okay?"

"Yeah, sure."

"Maybe we should sit down," Dean said, leading her to the couch.

"What's wrong?" Intrigue was quickly turning into concern and panic. "Did something happen?"

"No," Sam said reassuringly and it helped a little. "We were just wondering if you'd want to come with us on the road."

"What?" That thought had honestly never occurred to her. But now that Sam had brought it up, it seemed obvious.

Dean grabbed her upper arm to get her attention. She looked at him, grabbing his arm in the same place he was grabbing hers.

"As long as this thing is after you, you're in danger."

She nodded. "I know that."

"And we can't stay here for much longer," Sam said. "The only way we can look out for you is if you come with us."

"To be honest," she started, "I was thinking about getting away from here for a while."

"Well, we're going to be away from here, so that should work out," Dean said, grinning. He loosened his grip on her arm, but didn't remove it. She didn't mind; in fact, she found it comforting. She didn't remove her hand from his arm either and he didn't complain.

"If I were to say yes, when would we be leaving?"

"Whenever you get done doing whatever you need to do with that lawyer."

"Oh." She took a deep breath and then let it out slowly. "Look, I don't really have a choice. Do I? I mean, if I stay here I would put everyone I love in danger. At least you guys know how to handle stuff like this. So I guess the answer is yes."

They looked appeased by her answer and Dean was using his thumb to rub her arm soothingly, which she normally wouldn't allow. She barely knew this guy. But she needed to be soothed.

From the second she had even contemplated going with them her life changed.

So, yeah. She needed to be soothed.


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter Four

Alyson was at her house getting her things together. Sam and Dean had told her that she couldn't bring a lot, which wasn't a problem because everything in the house brought back memories. She had only one bag and it was filled with clothes and a few pictures of her mom and of her own friends. The clothes she was bringing were all practical like jeans and T-shirts, and the pictures were from the shoebox she'd found in her mom's closet, except for the ones of her friends - they were from her phone mostly.

Alyson had told Layla that if she had wanted anything from the house she could take it, and the things she didn't want Alyson would give to Goodwill or some kind of charity. She would do the same to her mom's clothes and the rest of her belongings. The furniture would be sold with the house, which would up the price a little, but she didn't care about that.

She was going to bring along her laptop and her Ipod. The Ipod was Sam's idea; he had said that all Dean listened to was classic rock and, while she liked classic rock, it wasn't the only music she listened to. Sometimes she needed music that helped her chill, not music that made her want to bang her head.

It was going on eight o'clock at night now and she had had a pretty full day. She had gone to the lawyer's office to get the house situation sorted out, and then she had gone to Layla's house. They had talked for over an hour and Alyson had ended up signing her car over to Layla. They had gone to the DMV to do that. Alyson had then told Layla that she was going to leave for a while and she didn't know when or if she would be back. Layla had made a fuss about her being alone and she had told Layla that she wouldn't be. There had been questions about who she was going to be with, so Alyson had told her part of the truth: That she was going with Sam and Dean because they were the only ones who could protect her. She had told Layla not to tell anyone; Alyson knew she wouldn't. Ever.

Layla had wanted to be there to see Alyson off, but Alyson knew that would just make it harder to leave, so she had told Layla not to come. She had given Layla the house key and had told her what she wanted her to do with the things in the house.

Sam and Dean were supposed to be picking her up at eight-thirty and she was getting nervous. She had made the decision to go with them because she had known it was the only thing she could do. That didn't mean it wasn't a hard decision to make, and it didn't mean she wasn't going to miss everyone.

The sound of her cell phone ringing brought her out of her thoughts. It startled her, even, She pulled it out of her pants pocket, flipped it open, and answered it.

"Hello?"

"Hey, it's Dean."

"Oh. Hi."

"We're outside. We didn't know if you wanted us to wait out here or to come in."

"You can come in. I'm upstairs in my room."

"We'll be right there."

. . .

The Winchester brothers were by Alyson's side in thirty seconds. They both had something they wanted to ask her. They'd been talking about it the entire time since they'd left her at Layla's house the night before.

"What?" Alyson asked softly. Apparently, they were transparent.

"We were wondering when you were going to tell us what was in that letter your mom left you," Dean said.

"Oh. Okay. You can read it if you want to. I don't actually understand it. Maybe you will."

She handed them the letter after she got it out of her jacket, which was lying on her bed.

Things were quiet while the brothers read it. After they finished was a different story.

"So, this doesn't mean anything to you?" Sam asked.

"No. I mean, my mom never mentioned it to me."

"Well," Dean said warily. "At least we know why the demon is after you. Even if we don't know what it means."

What exactly was a Warrior for the Light? It had to be a good thing, right? And it would explain her healing thing, Dean guessed. Her mom said she'd be able to do extraordinary things, and healing was definitely extraordinary.

* * *

Alyson was now in the backseat of the Impala. Dean was a little . . . unnerved. He hadn't thought twice about letting Alyson come with them once he knew her mom had known his mom and that now the demon that had killed his mother was ruining Alyson's life too. But he was unnerved because he'd never really had anyone else depending on him. Well, his dad sometimes, but for the most part it had always been him and Sam, and now with Alyson with them it added a third dynamic that Dean wasn't sure was going to work out.

They had been on the road for almost three hours - taking back roads, of course.

"Wouldn't it be quicker to go on the interstate?" Alyson asked.

"There are fewer cops on back roads than there are on the interstate," Sam said. He was in the passenger seat, so he turned to look at her while he talked. "We try to avoid cops."

"Why?" She was intrigued, it seemed. "Are you in trouble or something?"

"Well," Dean began to answer., "I'm not actually supposed to be alive and if anyone saw me and recognized me, I'd probably be locked up for life."

Alyson seemed shocked, to say the least. "Why? I mean, you seem like a pretty good guy."

"We worked a case a while back with a shape shifter - it's something that can change into anyone. It hurt a girl while it looked like me. They blamed a couple of murders on me. I shot the thing and it still looked like me. So what they buried, they thought was me."

"So . . ." Alyson took a deep breath, taking what he'd said in. "You were up for murder and people think you're dead?"

"Yeah. That pretty much sums it up," Dean said.

"Okay, yea. I see how you being recognized would be a problem." Alyson sighed. "I feel like I went to sleep and then woke up in some kind of bizzaro world."

"You kinda did," Sam said, smiling slightly.

All was quiet for about a minute, but then Alyson said, "Are you going to teach me how to hunt?"

Dean was sort of against that and sort of for it. He kind of didn't see any other option, but he still didn't have to like it. Alyson hadn't been brought up in this life. In fact, her life had been pretty much the complete opposite. Her house alone was proof of the fact that she'd had a pampered life. Her room in her house had been bigger than some of the motel rooms he and Sam had shared.

"Are you sure you want to know how?" Sam asked.

"No, I'm not," she said honestly. "But I don't wanna be useless and I want to be able to defend myself."

"We'll see," Dean said. "But this job . . . it changes you."

Alyson nodded. "It doesn't change the fact that I need to know."

Right now Alyson Daniels was innocent. Dean didn't want to take that away from her. But she was right; she did need to know. She needed to be able to defend herself long enough for one of them to get to her.

He guessed he and Sam would have to take on the roll of teacher; he just hoped she was a good student, a fast learner.

* * *

Dean drove until they reached Coaldale, Nevada, and then he checked them into a motel. Two rooms, adjoining, at Alyson's request. Dean and his brother were reluctant to let her stay on her own; the demon could come looking for her at any time. Neither guy wanted her alone if or when that happened. Dean agreed only after she said she'd keep the door to her room open so they could keep an eye on her.

Thankfully, the night passed by uneventfully, and when they woke up the next morning they went out for breakfast.

Dean was skimming a newspaper that Sam had picked up on the way there. Dean hadn't found anything that even remotely resembled a job. He was vaguely aware of Sam talking to Alyson about John Winchester, their dad, whom he and Sam had been looking for. He and Sam had run into him a few weeks back and they had faced a shadow demon together. He and Sam had sent their father away becasue they thought he was weaker when they were with him.

"You have no idea where he is?" Alyson asked sympathetically.

"Nope," Sam said. "Sometimes he calls or sends us a text, but not very often."

"Wow, that's gotta be frustrating," she replied.

"That's definitely the word for it," Dean said, putting the newspaper aside.

Sam looked at him and then down at the newspaper. "Find anything?"

"Nah," Dean answered. "Nothing really sounds like our kind of thing."

Their waitress came out with their food. Dean's plate looked just like a pile of grease. Bacon, eggs, sausage. Sam's plate was slightly healthier, and Alyson was eating only pancakes. Halfway through Dean's meal, Alyson stopped eating hers and he got the rest of her pancakes.

* * *

Dean was back in the driver's seat again and Sam was back in the passenger seat. That left the backseat for Alyson. She had asked them to go through some of the more interesting cases they had worked, so Dean was in the middle of explaining what a woman in white was.

"So they stick around because their husbands cheated on them?" Alyson asked, skeptically. "That's why they kill people?"

"Not all people," Sam corrected. "Just guys who have been unfaithful."

"Why didn't she just get over it? I don't get it. i mean, someone cheats on you, you have yourself a good cry, dump him, and forget about them. You don't kill your kids, or yourself."

"I agree with you on that one," Dean said. "But ghosts and spirits . . . they don't have consciences; they have no morals. If they want revenge, they want revenge. It doesn't matter to them how they get it."

"Okay, well, if they're dead, how do you get rid of them? I mean, they have no butt to kick."

"You find their bones, salt them, and burn them. It lays the spirit to rest or whatever."

"You can repel spirits and demons with salt," Sam explained. "Or iron."

"Yeah, you know, I read that somewhere," Alyson said. "The salt thing. It's supposed to be pure, right?"

"Yeah." Dean began to wonder about Alyson then. Maybe she was more than met the eye. More than a blond-haired, brown-eyed teenager. More than the obvious was different about her. "Why were you reading stuff like that?"

"I told you before, I like learning, just not school stuff. If it was weird or unexplainable, I was into it. I just never knew it was real."

"I'm sorry you had to find out," Dean said sincerely.

When no one said anything else, Dean put a tape in the radio and turned up the volume.

* * *

"Okay, if you're gonna become a hunter, you're gonna need to know how to shoot a gun."

Dean had pulled off on the side of the road near one of the many fields they had been passing. He was now popping the trunk of the Impala open and lifting the cover off his weapons trunk. There were knives, guns, crosses, stakes, and other weapons that could fight off demons or ghosts. Another reason cops were bad. If they ever got pulled over and the police had to look in the trunk for any reason, they'd be in jail faster than anyone could blink.

Dean picked up the smallest gun he had and made sure it had bullets. He looked at Alyson and noticed she seemed nervous.

"You ever shot a gun before?"

"No," she replied, looking at the gun in his hand. "And something tells me it's not going to be easy to learn."

"It really depends on whether or not you're a natural," Sam said from inside the car. He had been sleeping and Dean had wanted to let him sleep for a while longer. Or at least until Dean let Alyson fire the gun.

"We're gonna go out in the field and work on your posturing. You know, how you hold the gun. You can seriously hurt yourself if you don't do it right."

Dean wasn't going to take for granted that Alyson had healed that one time. It may have been an anomaly, a one-time occurrence.

When he began walking, the girl followed him. "We won't worry about your aiming today. I just want you to get used to the feeling of the gun in your hand. Get comfortable holding and shooting it."

Dean handed her the gun and she kept it pointed at the ground like she was afraid it might go off on its own. The safety was still on, but holding the gun seemed to make her uncomfortable.

"Now before you go shootin' that thing, let me tell you somethin'. Your arm is probably going to be sore. That's why you're startin' with the smallest gun I have."

"Okay, show me how to do this."

Dean looked at her and grinned; her determination was adorable. "Leave the safety on for now; I'm gonna be in front of her for a minute."

"I wouldn't pull the trigger if you were in front of me. I wouldn't even touch the trigger."

Not that the bullet would have hit him anyway, because the gun was still pointed at the ground.

Dean stepped in front of her. "Now, when you fire a gun, it's going to jolt you. You need to be able to keep your balance. The gun you're holding won't do much; you might have to step back a little when you shoot it, but try to avoid moving at all."

"Okay," she said, letting him know he understood.

"Let me see how you think you're supposed to hold a gun."

She took a deep breath, brought it up with her right hand and aimed it somewhere Dean wasn't standing. She brought her left hand up and cupped half of her right wrist and the part of her right hand that was holding onto the gun.

"Am I doing this right?"

"Mostly." Her hands were where they should've been, but her shoulders were off. Dean got behind her and touched her left shoulder, moving it to how it should've been. "You should be fine now."

Dean stepped back and she turned to look at him.

"Can I shoot now?"

Dean looked toward the road, making sure there wasn't any oncoming traffic; there wasn't anything on the road but them. He gave her the go-ahead.

She took the safety off of the gun and her arm started to shake. Dean noticed and said, "Wait."

"What?" she didn't lower the gun.

"You don't have to do this if you don't want to. Not today, anyway."

Alyson did lower her arms now.

"Look . . . this job that you and Sam have is something I'm not going to be able to help with. At all." She let out a small laugh. "I don't even know what I'm doing, and you're not going to be able to be there all the time. Neither is Sam."

_She's a very brave girl_, Dean thought. On the outside, he said, "Okay. I just wanted you to know that you have a choice."

Alyson smiled slightly. "Thank you."

Alyson stood in the field, feeling Dean's presence behind her, his words going through her mind. Did she really want to do this? No. But she didn't feel that she had a choice - no matter what Dean said. She didn't want to have to depend on Dean and Sam all the time. She wanted to be able to protect herself so the brothers wouldn't have to.

Alyson had already taken the safety off of the gun, so she steadied her arm, positioned her shoulders the way Dean had shown her, and pulled the trigger. Dean had been right; she did have to take a step back. Also, she felt like she could feel the vibration of her ear drums. That's how loud the gunshot had been.

"You okay?" Dean asked, still behind her.

"Yeah," she replied reassuringly.

"You wanna try again? You have five bullets left."

"Yeah, I do." She got in position again, only this time she placed her right foot a little bit behind her so she'd be able to stop herself from moving. The five years of martial arts was going to pay off in this profession; her training had taught her about keeping her balance within and without.

Alyson braced herself, took a deep breath, and pulled the trigger again. This time only her upper body moved; she didn't have to take a step back.

"I don't see how you and Sam haven't gone deaf," she said, her ears were ringing.

"What?" Dean asked.

Alyson lowered the gun and turned toward Dean. "I said -" Dean was grinning. "Oh, it's possible you were joking."

"Maybe a little bit."

She handed the gun to Dean. "I think I'm done for the day."

"You sure?"

"Yep. You and Sam need to find a job and help save lives, remember?"

"Right," he said.

They walked back to the car in silence. Alyson thought about how her life was changing on the way.

* * *

About a day and a half had passed and Alyson and the Winchesters were now somewhere in Nebraska. They had checked into another room because Dean was tired and so was Sam, and Dean wouldn't let Alyson drive his car. When he'd said she couldn't, she wanted to stick her tongue out at him and pout, but she was too mature for that. So they were in a motel room. They hadn't been able to get adjoining rooms, but she didn't complain. She couldn't always have her way.

Dean hadn't wanted to leave her alone, so Sam had gone out to get food and she went to sleep. Until Dean woke her up, anyway. He said he was bored. Alyson could've smacked him in the head, but she didn't. If she had been more comfortable with Dean, had known him longer, she probably wouldn't have held back.

Alyson yawned and stretched, but didn't sit up. She was comfortable and she refused to get up. She realized Sam was still gone - maybe that was why Dean was bored. She yawned again, and Dean looked like he almost felt guilty for waking her up.

"You could've gone with Sam, you know?"

"And leave you here alone? I don't think so," Dean said, and it sounded like his full-blown protectiveness was kicking in. "Look, it's Sam's and my responsibility to keep you alive, and I intend to do it."

"So I'm just a job to you?"

Alyson didn't want to be _just a job_ to anyone. That was part of why she wanted Sam and Dean to teach her the ropes; she'd be able to contribute.

"That's not what I meant," Dean said. "That's part of it, but we wouldn't have asked you to come if we didn't want you with us."

As Dean watched the girl - really, she was so very young - look up at him, he began to feel protectiveness wash over him. It wasn't very long ago that he was taking care of a seventeen year old Sam.

"I'm not leaving you alone."

Dean wasn't lying about part of the reason they'd brought her alone was responsibility; the other part was Alyson herself. She was a good person and didn't deserve to die at the hand of this sadistic demon.

"Because that thing's coming after me?" she asked as if she'd read his mind.

Dean nodded, and a bitter look passed over the blond's face.

"Yeah, well, with my luck, it would kill whoever was with me before it even tried to get to me." She looked away from him. "I don't want anyone else to die because of me."

Dean sat down beside her. He was decidedly uncomfortable with the way this situation was going. He did not want a sobbing girl on his hands.

He cleared his throat. "Yeah, well . . . that's what Sam and I are here for. We're good at what we do."

Dean's phone vibrated then. It was on the nightstand between the beds, so he reached over and grabbed it. He had received a text. Coordinates.

"Hm."

"What?"

"Coordinates," Dean said.

"Your dad sent them?"

"Yeah, I think. He's always using unknown numbers so we can't track him."

"Oh. Well, I can look up the coordinates, if you want. I actually already know what to do with that. No learning necessary."

"A'right. I'm gonna call Sam, let him know what happened. After you find where the coordinates point to, get on the computer and find out if anything strange is going on around there."

"Shouldn't you be doing that? I mean, I might miss something."

"How else are you gonna learn? Besides, I'll go over it after you do."

* * *

At around eight o'clock the next morning Dean woke Alyson again. This time it wasn't because he was bored; they were getting ready to leave. They were heading to Fitchburg, Wisconsin.

Alyson got up, went to the bathroom to change into a blue sweater and jeans. Aside from brushing her hair, she did nothing to it. It was a lost cause that day, so . . . She walked out of the bathroom, grabbed her bag and made sure everything was in it, started going outside, but Dean's voice interrupted her actions.

"Whoa, where're you goin'?"

"To . . . put my stuff in the car?" she hadn't meant for her words to come out as a question.

"Wait for one of us," he said.

Alyson sighed even as a warmth settled over her at the concern Dean was showing. "Dean, it's just a few feet outside and it's broad daylight."

Sam picked up his bag and came up to her. "Best to just listen to him. He's impossible like this."

She and Sam walked out to the Impala, and Alyson willingly got in the backseat. She was going to use the car time wisely and get some more sleep.

Once Sam got situated in the passenger seat, he turned to look at her. "Does it bother you?"

"What?"

"Dean. Does him being like this bother you? He can be a little overbearing."

"Not really. It's kind of endearing, actually. I'm just not used to it. My mom was . . . irresponsible. She wasn't a bad mother. Far from it, but I took more care of her than she did of me. I'm pretty sure the bills wouldn't have been paid if I hadn't been there to remind her to do it every month."

Alyson laughed at the memory and then felt like crying because the memory of her mother's death was too fresh.

"Anyway, it feels nice having someone look out for me for a change. So yeah, the protectiveness is okay. I just don't want you two feeling like you have to walk on eggshells around me. I promise I won't break."

Sam nodded. "I'll try and remember that."

* * *

Alyson was being woken up again. This time it was both Sam's and Dean's faults. They were arguing and, since she was in the backseat, she couldn't tune them out.

"Will you two please shut up?" she asked, sitting up.

Dean looked at her through the rear-view mirror. "Well, look who finally decided to wake up."

"How long was I asleep?"

"Nearly four hours," Sam said, looking at his watch. "Do you always sleep this much."

Alyson didn't want to blush, but her cheeks grew warm anyway.

"I haven't had a decent night's sleep since before my mom died. I'm catching up on my rest." She sat up so she could lean her arms on the front seat and stick her head between them. "Or I'm trying to catch up, but _someone_ keeps waking me up."

She looked pointedly at Dean, and he grinned. "It was time for you to get up anyway."

"Right." She leaned back in the seat. "So, where are we?"

"About five minutes from Fitchburg," Sam said.

"Which is where we're supposed to be," Dean said smugly.

"Well, then, I don't know why we're here."

"Yeah, your probably missed something, that's why."

"Dude," Sam began. "I ran Lexis Nexis, local police reports, newspapers - I couldn't find a single red flag. Are you sure you got the coordinates right?"

"Yeah, I double-checked. It's Fitchburg, Wisconsin."

"I checked them, too," Alyson said. "Got the same thing."

"Thank you," Dean said, winning that argument. "Look, Dad wouldn't have sent us coordinates if it wasn't important, Sammy."

"Well, I'm tellin' you, I looked, and all I could find was a big steaming pile of nothin'. If Dad's sending us hunting for something, I don't know what."

"Well, maybe he's gonna meet us there." Dean sounded hopeful.

"Yeah, 'cause he's been so easy to find up to this point."

"You're a real smart-ass, you know that?" He paused and then said, "Don't worry. I'm sure there's somethings in Fitchburg worth killin'."

"Yeah? What makes you so sure?" Sam was skeptical.

"Well, I'm the oldest, which means I'm always right."

"No, it doesn't," Sam scoffed.

"Yeah, it totally does."

Alyson smiled and sat back in the seat. Now the brothers weren't so much arguing as they were bantering. Alyson liked that, almost envied it, the familial bond they had. She kind of wanted that type of relationship with someone.

* * *

As soon as they spotted a cafe, they stopped for coffee. Dean went in to get it while Sam stayed outside with Alyson. She usually didn't drink coffee or caffeine, period, because it made her jitter, but she figured she might as well make friends with it if her sleep was going to keep getting interrupted.

She got out of the car to stretch her legs and her whole body, for that matter, and looked around. There were stores up and down the street behind her and on the other side of her was a playground. The problem was there was only one little girl playing there. She was with her mom, Alyson assumed, because there was a woman there sitting on a bench, watching the little girl.

"Sam?"

"Yeah?" he said, getting out of the car. He probably needed to stretch, too. As tall as he was, he couldn't be comfortable being in the car for long periods of time.

"What time is it?"

"A little after four. Why?"

"Look at the playground," she said, and he did.

"Huh," he said, more to himself than to her. "School should be out, shouldn't it?"

"Yeah," she answered. "So, where is everybody?"

"You're right. This place should be crawling with kids right now."

Alyson decided she wanted to know what was going on and why there was only one kind on the playground, so she began to walk forward, but Sam pulled her back.

"Where're you going?"

"To talk to that girl's mom," she said. "You wanna come?"

"No," Sam said, as if he were remembering what she'd told him that morning. "I'll wait here. Just tell me what she says when you get back."

"Sir, yes, sir," she mock-saluted him, which drew a grin from him.

"Go on, Get over there."

When Alyson got to the playground she walked over to the bench and sat down next to the woman there.

"It sure is quiet out here," she said, just trying to make conversation. She watched as the little girl started climbing the monkey bars.

"Yeah, it's a shame."

"What is?" Alyson looked away from the little girl and toward the mom.

"You know, kids getting sick. It's a terrible thing."

"How many?"

The woman looked at her. "Just five or six, but it's serious - hospital serious. A lot of parents are getting pretty anxious. They think it's catching."

"Wow. And nobody knows what causing it?"

The woman shook her head. "No, that's why some of the parents are on edge."

"Oh." Alyson didn't really know what to say to that, but it didn't really matter because Dean was calling her name from across the street, anyway. "Sorry, I have to go."

"Possessive boyfriend?"

Alyson almost scoffed. "Nah. More like overprotective big brother."

"Ah, well, at least he cares," the woman said.

"Yeah. Anyway, it was nice talking to you even if the topic was less than pleasant." Alyson stood up and began walking, but she stopped and turned back around. "Those kids that are sick . . . Did they have to go to a special hospital, you know, for a certain thing?"

"No," the woman said. "They're at the local hospital."

"Oh, okay." Alyson smiled slightly. "Good-bye for real this time."

Alyson walked back to Sam and Dean. Dean handed her a coffee once she reached him.

"Thank you."

"Mm-hm," he responded.

Alyson reached into her pocket to get some money to give him for the coffee, but when she tried to give it to him, he wouldn't take it.

"Dean . . ." She didn't want to be a mooch.

"Tell me what you found out and we'll call it even," he said. "Okay?"

"Yeah," she said. "There's not much to tell, though. The playground is almost empty because kids are getting sick. Hospital sick. Nobody knows what's causing it. Oh, and they're at the local hospital."

* * *

As soon as Sam and Dean found out about the hospital , they decided to pretend to be workers sent from the Center for Disease Control.

"You're kidding, right?" Alyson asked. She hadn't signed up for impersonating a government official. She was going to get in so much trouble.

"No," they both said.

"Well, what am I supposed to do? I'm too young. I mean, unless I'm job-shadowing or something like that."

Dean looked at her. "That might actually work. We're gonna have to get you the right type of clothes, though."

"Oh, no." That meant she'd end up wearing some sort of woman business-type suit thing. With heels. She hated high heels. they were shoes that were made in hell, she was sure. They were designed specifically to make her fall and break her butt bone or her ankle.

After Alyson had all the clothes she needed to look the part, the three ended up at the hospital.

"Dude," Sam said. "Dude, I am not using this ID."

"Why not?"

"Because it says bikini inspector on it."

Dean laughed and so did Alyson, but hers was more from being nervous than anything else. Sam and Dean were using face ID's and Sam didn't want to use the one he had.

"Don't worry," Dean was saying. "She won't look that close." He was talking about the receptionist, Alyson assumed. "She won't even ask to see it. It's all about confidence, Sam."

Dean pushed Sam toward the front desk and then grabbed Alyson's arm to pull her away with him. They stopped a few feet away from Sam.

"Hi," Sam said. "I'm Dr. Jerry Kaplan. Center for Disease Control."

"Can I see some ID?"

Dean, who was standing right beside Alyson, tried not to laugh. Sam glared at him but smiled at the receptionist. He took the ID out of his jacket and quickly showed it to her and then put it away. Alyson probably would've asked to see it again, but, thankfully, the receptionist didn't.

Sam asked the receptionist to direct him to the pediatrics ward, which she did, and then Sam turned to Dean, glaring again as he walked toward him.

"See?" Dean said. "I told you it'd work."

Sam shook his head and said quietly. "Follow me. It's upstairs." So they followed him.

As they walked down the hallway, Alyson started to feel weird. She didn't know if it was becasue she just hated hospitals or if it was something else, but she felt weird. She was having trouble breathing and she felt like her head was spinning.

She looked around and saw that Dean had fallen behind. He was looking into a room that they had passed a few seconds ago. The door was open and she didn't know what he was staring at, but she didn't really care at that point, because she was focusing on her breathing.

"Guys?" Sam called out, getting their attention. Sam must've seen the way Alyson was acting, because he looked concerned all of a sudden. "Are you okay?"

"I'm . . . I feel weird," she said.

"Weird?" Dean asked.

"Yeah . . . Like . . . I don't know. Just weird. Dizzy and like I can't breathe."

Dean looked at Sam. "Should we let her rest?"

"No," she said, refusing to hold them back. "We can go. I'm good. I just hate hospitals."

Sam nodded hesitantly and they started walking again. Dean walked beside her and she tried matching her breathing with his. Within a minute, she was feeling better.

"You good now?" Dean asked as they turned into another hallway and went upstairs.

"Yeah."

"What was that?"

"I don't know," she said honestly. "The only other time that's ever happened to me is before that demon attacked me the second time."

"Hm. Were you freaking out?" Dean asked, not joking around. She must've freaked _him_ out.

"No." She had no reason to freak out now. "I just felt . . . not right. But it had nothing to do with what we were doing. It was odd."

"You're odd," he said. Now he was joking and it made Alyson smile a little.

"That's not news to me."

* * *

The three found Dr. Hydecker, who was the lead doctor for the pediatrics ward, and tried talking to him.

"Well, thanks for seein' us, Dr. Hydecker," Dean said. He wasn't freaked out over Alyson's episode anymore, but he was still curious as to what had caused it.

The blond looked like she felt weird and she was controlling her breath. She was shaking and looked like she was about to hurl.

"Oh, I'm glad you guys are here," Dr. Hydecker said. "I was just about to call the CDC myself. How'd you find out anyway?"

"Oh, some GP, I forget his name, he called Atlanta, and, uh, must have beat you to the punch."

"So you say you got six cases so far?" Sam asked.

"Yeah. In five weeks." They walked toward one of the rooms. It had a window-glass thing so they could see into the room without actually going in. "At first we thought it was garden-variety bacterial pneumonia - not that newsworthy, but now . . ." the doctor trailed off.

"Now what?" Sam and Alyson asked.

"The kids aren't responding to antibiotics. Their white cell counts keep going down. Their immune systems just aren't doin' their job. It's like their bodies are wearing out."

A nurse walked up to them. Her name-tag read Betty.

"Excuse me, Dr. Hydecker." She had a clipboard in her hand, which she handed to the doctor. He looked down at the paper on the clipboard and pulled a pen out of his shirt pocket.

"You ever see anything like this before?" Sam asked.

"Never this severe." The doctor signed whatever he was holding and gave the clipboard back to the nurse.

"The way it spreads, though - that's a new one for me."

"What d'you mean?" Sam asked.

"It works its way through families, but only the children - one sibling after another."

Dean spoke up. "Do you mind if we interview a few of the kids?"

"They're not conscious."

"None of them?" she asked.

"No," the nurse said.

"Can we, uh - can we talk to the parents?"

"If you think it'll help."

"Yeah," Dean said. "Why was you most recent admission?"

Dr. Hydecker told them about two girls - sisters - that had been admitted a couple of days earlier. Mr. Tarnower, the girls father, had agreed to talk to them, so they were now asking him questions. Dean felt bad for taking him away from his kids, but they needed all the information they could get. If they couldn't fix this, this man's girls were probably going to die, along with the rest of the kids who were sick. So, hopefully they could fix it.

"I should get back to my girls," the dad said.

"We understand that," Sam said. "And we really appreciate you talkin' to us. Now, you say Mary's the oldest?"

"Thirteen," Mr. Tarnower said, nodding.

"Okay. And she came down with it first, right? And then . . ."

"Bethany the next night."

"Within twenty-four hours?" Alyson asked.

"I guess. Look, I already went through all this with the doctor." He was being impatient, but Dean didn't' blame him; anyone would be.

"A'right, now, just a few more questions, if you don't mind." Dean was trying to calm him down. "How do you think they caught pneumonia? Were they out in the cold? Anything like that?"

"No. We think it was an open window."

"Both times?"

"The first time, I don't really remember, but the second time for sure. I know I closed it before I put Bethany to bed."

"So you think she opened it?" Sam asked.

"It's a second story window with a ledge. No one else could've."

"Thank you for your time," Sam said.

They walked away from the dad and started going toward the stairs.

"You know, this might not be anything supernatural. It might just be pneumonia," Sam said.

"Maybe. Or maybe somethin' opened that window. I don't know, man. Look, Dad sent us down here for a reason. I think we might be barkin' up the right tree."

"I'll tell you one thing," Sam said.

"What?" Dean asked.

"That guy we just talked to? I'm bettin' it'll be a while before he goes back home."

Sam and Dean exchanged a knowing look and started walking again.

"Wait, what're you talkin' about?" Alyson said. Neither of them said anything until they reached the car.

"How do you feel about breaking and entering?" Dean asked.

"That depends. Are you in any way joking?"

"No," both Sam and Dean said.

"Oh, and you expect me to come with you?"

"Yep."

"Oh. Well, sure, it sounds great. Except for the I'll-definitely-get-caught factor."

Sam smiled slightly. "You won't have to do anything. Not yet, anyway. But if you're going to learn to be a hunter, you need to know these things."

Alyson nodded after a moment's hesitation. "Well, let's go then."

* * *

_We're going to jail_, Alyson thought. _Any minute the police are gonna show up and put us in handcuffs._

Alyson was standing in the middle of Bethany Tarnower's room, watching Sam and Dean do their thing. Dean was doing something with an EMF meter. Alyson knew it was supposed to be used to let them know if spirit activity was going on, but it wasn't going off at all. So, apparently, they weren't dealing with a spirit.

"You got anything over there?" Sam asked. He didn't have an EMF; he was just looking around.

"No, nothin'," Dean answered.

"Yeah, me neither." Sam moved around the room and toward the window. He made a face, so Alyson assumed he'd found something. "Hey, Dean.

"Yeah?"

Sam opened the window and both Dean and Alyson went to him.

"You were right. It's not pneumonia."

There was a black hand-print on the window ledge. It was the longest hand-print Alyson had ever seen. It clearly wasn't human.

"What leaves a hand-print like that?" Sam asked.

Alyson looked at Dean for the answer, but he was staring at the hand-print intently like he'd seen it before.

"Dean?" Alyson put her hand on his upper arm to get his attention.

"Huh? What?"

"What leaves a hand-print like that?" Sam repeated.

This time Dean did answer.

"A shtriga. I know why Dad sent us here. He's found this thing before."

Sam looked confused, so Alyson didn't feel bad for not knowing either.

"He wants us to finish the job."

* * *

Okay, so I proofread this, but then I X-ed out of it without saving it, so whatever mistakes you find blame on my dumb blond moment.


End file.
